Ubuntu 12.10 will include advertisements for products on Amazon. It will look like this - if you search, product suggestions will pop up. This seems like a rather slippery slope to me, and I certainly wouldn't want this on my desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or anywhere else. On the web - fine, I'm on your site, not mine - but my desktop is mine, and mine alone. Not that it matters - open source, someone will disable them. Biggest concern: does this mean my search queries get sent across the web?

I have to say I find the whole thing fascinating myself. I mean here is the company that the community gushed over, now when they are bleeding to death and trying to keep the lights on its "ZOMG they are trying to make money! How dare they not do everything for free, i'll switch OSes first!" Wharrgarbl!

I have to admit, I never did get the big deal with Ubuntu back in those days. I kept trying it, version after version, trying to figure out what the big deal was with no success. And later on, for a while they started to do the right things, so it was interesting--but it was still just Debian, only with an installable live CD, more up-to-date applications, a custom theme, less stability, and the commercial backing of a billionaire.

I despised advertising back then, and I despise advertising now. For me, nothing's changed. Hell, I only used Ubuntu for a brief time, mostly back in 2008. Back when it really was starting to get good. Before and shortly after then, as well as now, I was and have been using something else.

How many "Ubuntu derived" distros are there, enjoying the fruits of Canonical labor without throwing them even a beer? I rest my case.

You make that seem like a bad thing, but Canonical itself seems to be enjoying it. Most recent example: Lubuntu.

The big mistake Shuttleworth made was using Linux in the first place, if he'd have used BSD as Jobs did he could have kept his work, charged $20 a pop once the buzz built up and would now have the money to not only continue but actually improve the system.

Yes, because we all want another god damn proprietary operating system.